Heart, Mind, Soul
by Tolehrer
Summary: They said that having your soul by your side could be a weakness. Emma didn't know about the rest of the world, but Ripkin made her strong. Once Upon A Time with the daemons from His Dark Materials. Mainly unrelated one shots, though some follow on from each other. Not in order. Ensemble cast.
1. 1--Captain Hook?

The blacksmith's magpie daemon shrieks loudly when they tie him up, scratching at Ripkin's eyes with her claws.

"Cyrilla," he calls her quietly, and she stills, coming to a rest on a root by his feet.

"So who are you?" Emma demands.

He smiles, a bright smile that cuts like a blade. "Killian Jones. Most people have taken to calling me by my more colourful moniker, though. Hook."

Ripkin's tufted ears prick, so she doesn't bother even trying to hide her surprise. "As in Captain Hook?"

Cyrilla's feather's ruffle, pleased. "So you've heard of me," Hook grins.

Mary Margaret pulls a shining, wickedly-shard steel hook from the satchel and holds it up, her lips parted. Cyrilla screams and flies forwards, grasping the hook and pulling it from Mary Margaret's hands. She lands back next to Hook, one clawed foot tight around the hook on the floor. "Let us go," she demands in a lyrical voice, glaring between Ripkin and Mary Margaret's Ozymandias.

"Shut up, liar," Ripkin cuts her off helpfully. Emma spares the lynx an annoyed glance, and whistles loudly enough that he winces. "There," she sighs. "You can answer us or the ogres."

"Not a chance, love," Hook grins. With a shrug, The small party turns to leave him. Ripkin hesitates until he is pulled after Emma. She hasn't time to wonder why before Hook is calling her back. "Alright! You've bested me. I can count the number of people who've done that on one hand."

Emma listens as he gives his explanations, studying him carefully. When he pauses, she turns to Ripkin. "Is he lying?" Ripkin shakes his head, intent on the little magpie daemon beside the bound man.

He's never failed her before, so she unties Hook without complaint. "You won't regret this," he promises her.

"If you betray us, you will," she returns. They hurry away from the sound of approaching ogres, Hook already making lurid remarks and heavy comments about how he wouldn't mind being tied up again in different circumstances.

Normally, the comments wouldn't even register, but for the fact that the whole time they walk, Cyrilla perches delicately between Ripkin's mottled shoulders, and he doesn't say a word.


	2. 2--On the Beanstalk, part I

"I can't go," Snow says regretfully, glancing at Ozymandias by her side. He buts her gently with his antlers in apology.

Aurora looks nervously to her dove daemon. "It should be me, then. I have the least to lose."

"I promised to protect you-" Mulan breaks in.

Emma sighs. "I'm going. It's my son. Ripkin can climb perfectly well."

Hook strides forwards with a grin, placing her hand on his shoulder. "I was hoping it's be you, love," he leers.

She rolls her eyes, refusing to reply. Undaunted, Hook holds up the brace around his stump, gesturing to it happily.

"Not a chance," Emma snaps. The pirate might be charming and on his best behaviour so far, but she isn't stupid, and she's fairly certain he could kill her if he wanted.

He raises a dark eyebrow. "I can't exactly climb one-handed, can I?"

Reluctantly, she hands him the hook. He clicks it into place and Cyrilla immediately leaves his shoulder to perch on the hook.

"I'm not taking my eyes off you for a second." Emma warns them.

"We would despair if you did," he retorts.

It's going to be a long climb.


	3. 3--On the Beanstalk, part II

"You know, most men would take your silence as off-putting, but me, I love a challenge." Hook grins from his spot a few feet further down the stalk.

Emma doesn't reply. She's intent on Ripkin, watching his steady progress up the vine.

"I don't need you to talk," Hook continues. "You're something of an open book."

"Is that right?" she can't help replying.

Hook beams. "Aye. You're so determined to get back to your lad because you don't want him to be abandoned the way you were."

Cyrilla hops from his shoulder into the air and flies around their heads. The wind steals her lyrical voice, but Emma is sure she can hear some kind of sea shanty with interesting rhymes for 'block'.

"That's not intuition," Emma tells Hook, "That's eavesdropping."

Cyrilla laughs, landing so close to Emma she flinches away. "I like you, Swan," the daemon says.

A scream tears Emma's attention away from Hook's daemon. Ripkin is slipping from the stalk, his paws flailing against the air. "Emma!" He screams.

"Ripkin! Hold on, I'm-" he falls before the words have left her throat.

She gasps at the sharp tug in her gut, their bond pulled tight. She can feel her heart thrumming against her ribs. "Ripkin!"

Something inside her bends, stretches. She waits for the inevitable snap, but instead there is the feeling of being immersed in hot water. Heat rushes over her skin, raising a bright red flush. It's not unpleasant, it's-intimate.

Hook's steel namesake is embedded in the beanstalk. He's bent backwards, his hand closed around Ripkin's scruff.

The lynx daemon dangles limp in his grasp, stunned by the feel of another human's hands on him.

Emma watches, breathless, as the muscles in Hook's arm flex and he rights himself, setting Ripkin down beside Emma on a thick, stable branch of the beanstalk.

"Why did you do that?" Emma demands. She's hyperventilating, holding Ripkin hard against her. "You grabbed- you touched-"

"I'm sorry, Princess," Hook scoffs. "Should I have simply let him fall? What would that have done to you, I wonder?"

"I-" she breaks off then, burying her face in Ripkin's soft fur. Perhaps what shocks her the most is that Hook's rough hands in Ripkin's fur hadn't felt like a violation at all.


	4. 4--Giant's bane

The shackle closes around Hook's wrist with a click. "What-? Swan!" he gasps, reaching for her.

"I'm sorry. I can't take the chance that I'm wrong about you." She says, shaking her head.

Ripkin stares at her, aghast. "Emma! They helped us," he protests.

"And if we are wrong about them? If they hurt Henry and Phoena?" Ripkin says nothing more, but he growls quietly at her.

"I've risked my life-my safety-to help you," Hook snarls. "And this is how you repay me? Leave us to die?"

"You're not going to die," Emma protests. She can't look at Cyrilla, the angle of her beautiful, sapphire-emerald wings speaks too much of betrayal.

She turns around before she can change her mind, striding away towards the hole in the wall Anton left for her.

"Swan!" She hears Hook yell furiously, his voice mingling with Cyrilla angrily cursing Ripkin.

"Why are you doing this?" Ripkin asks her quietly, accusingly. "I can't be wrong about him. About them." she tells him. She can still feel Hook's fingers in Ripkin's fur.


	5. 5--Regina

Emma pulls up outside the mayor's house and gets out, holding the kid-Henry's-door open for him.

He climbs out reluctantly, his bag slung across one shoulder. Halfway up the path, the door bursts open and a woman rushes out. At a guess, Emma would put her at not quite ten years older than her. Her hair is immaculate, her makeup flawless. A dark panther daemon pads beside her on silent feet.

"Henry!" she cries, reaching forwards and drawing him into a tight hug. "Where have you been?" she demands.

Henry jerks away from her angrily. "I found my real mom," he snaps, charging inside the house and slamming the door.

The mayor's shoulders slump. Her daemon looks from the quivering door to where Ripkin sits on the path, delicately washing his paws.


	6. 6--Neverland, part I

Emma watches, horrified, as her companions lose their minds. Snow and Regina are screaming at each other, magic crackling around Regina's hands.

Behind her, David and Hook are fighting in earnest. The storm rages so loudly it almost drowns out the sound of their swords, whipping the Jolly Roger's sails against the three great masts. The ship rolls and tips on the water and the deck is slick with spray.

Hook and David circle each other, exchanging blows so fast their swords blur. David is stronger, and his sword is longer than Hook's cutlass, but the pirate is faster and he fights dirty, using his hook in tandem to his sword to catch and deflect David's blows. Hook is winning, Emma can see; skill and tactics aside, he has the advantage of knowing the ship and the movement of the sea-he moves with the _Jolly Roger, _where David is thrown off balance by the pitching deck.

David's Daniya snarls and swipes at Cyrilla, trying to catch the magpie daemon in her jaws. She flies just above the wolf daemon, diving in to rake at Daniya with her claws.

"Stop it! You're going to kill each other," Emma yells at them.

Hook suddenly drops his sword and falls to the deck, clutching his side and gasping. Daniya has Cyrilla in her teeth, shaking her back and forth.

David's eyes are clouded and unseeing. He makes no move to check Daniya, though Hook and Cyrilla are screaming.

"It's us!" Emma realises. "We're causing the storm, guys, stop!"

They can't hear her, or they won't. "Fine," she mutters. "If you won't listen, watch."

She rushes to the side of the ship and climbs up onto the railing. Below her, the sea is black. "Emma, please don't tell me this is your idea," Ripkin says.

"It'll be fine," she reassures him. "We'll just tread water for a few minutes."

"I can't swim," he cries.

Gathering up her daemon in her arms, she turns back to her companions on the ship. "Hey!"

She jumps before they can call her back. The water is icy and cuts through her like blades. Her lungs feel tight and small and she gasps at the surface, desperate for air. Ripkin splashes beside her, soaking wet and furious.

There's a brief flash of intense pain at the back of her head, and then nothing.

* * *

Hook snaps into awareness as soon as he feels the teeth of David's daemon close around Cyrilla.

It's agonising, like fiery blades closing around his heart, and all he can think is that it's been nearly three centuries since they last lost a fight. He's almost impressed with the prince, but targeting a man's daemon is low even for him.

He feels the release before he registers Emma disappearing over the side rail. Both Charmings and Regina are crowded around the rail, peering into the water.

Hook sees the panic in David's eyes and a small, vindictive part of him is delighted. The better part of him, the one that's surfacing more and more lately, knows he can't let Emma drown.

David pulls his sword belt off and drops it on the deck, grabbing the rigging above his head and hoisting himself up onto the rail.

"Wait," Hook calls, collecting the long coil if rope stored under the helm for just this reason. "Here, tie this on, mate."

David gives him an unfathomable look as he slips the rope over his shoulder. It's a heavy, weighted look that makes Hook feel as though he is being judged. He turns it right back on the prince, good hand going to where Cyrilla huddles against his neck, battered and sore.

David turns away, ashamed, and dives into the sea, his daemon splashing down beside him.

They duck beneath the surface three times before David surfaces with Emma in his arms. His daemon holds Emma's Ripkin in her jaws. "A lot more gentle than she was with us," Cyrilla hums in his ear. "Hard to believe of Prince Charming, isn't it? He seems the type to be above targeting his opponent's daemon. Fair fight, and all that."

He smirks, reaching to hook the line up to a pulley. "Ha. Hasn't stopped us. Are you alright now?"

"I suppose. I haven't been caught in...how long is it?" she asks thoughtfully.

Hook shrugs. "No idea. You should have been a tiger, 'Rill,"

She doesn't return the jab, simply hops of his shoulder to perch on the helm. David struggles aboard the ship, his arms full of Emma's limp body and his struggling daemon.

Hook feels a tug and turns to see Cyrilla is inching further away from him, closer to Emma's unconscious daemon. He follows reluctantly and watches the Charmings revive their daughter. Their daemons nose worriedly at Ripkin until he wakes and shakes his fur dry, and with a flash of shock, Hook realises he's incredibly glad.


	7. 7--Neverland, part II

Ripkin can remember the day he settled perfectly. They were being bullied by an older kid in the home when they were fourteen.

The kid had a big terrier daemon that liked to grab Ripkin and bite him until Emma cried. He'd been small, back then. He was often a mouse or a sparrow when they were children, because that's what Emma had felt like being.

The day he settled is the day Emma snapped. He'd burst from a dormouse into a snarling, spitting eurasian lynx twice the size of the bully's white terrier and scratched the other daemon across the face so viciously the boy hadn't talked for a week.

Afterwards, Emma ran her hands through his thick, spotted fur and traced the dark tips of his ears and his ruff. "Are we going to stay like this, then?" she'd asked him.

He'd nodded, and the fluid feeling inside him that had always been there solidified into something permanent, concrete.

Ripkin tells the story to Cyrilla on their fifth night in Neverland, while Hook and Emma sit on the other side of the camp discussing plans. He likes Cyrilla-more than Emma will let herself like Hook. "How did you settle?" he asks her.

She flicks her long dark tail and it flashes emerald, sapphire, deep royal purple. "We were fifteen, I think. It was the day we joined the navy. Killian's brother Liam was leftenant and first mate on the ship. The captain was a good man, but old; he had a dog daemon, I remember. On the day that we set sail, the captain gathered together all the boys whose daemons had not yet settled. We were some of the eldest there. He told us all to go to the prow and look out at the horizon. The sea seemed to go on forever, endless and powerful. We fell in love instantly. I flew up to get a better look, to see more of this amazing sight, and I knew then that I was done." Cyrilla looks down, her black eyes brighter than Ripkin has ever seen them. "We were always meant for the sea, for exploring."

Ripkin looks at her doubtfully. Cyrilla is clever and quick and she's earned his respect, but he's never before equated _sea_ with _magpie_. "A magpie," he says, deadpan, eyeing her delicate wings.

Cyrilla looks at him sharply, then over her shoulder at Hook. There's pain in her eyes, Ripkin sees, raw and open. "We've been to Neverland before," she says softly. "for more than three hundred years. It's a strange place, does strange things to daemons. You can never grow old here, never change-but what was fixed is not."

Before Ripkin's eyes, the small magpie vanishes. In her place stands another bird, massive and strong. He feels the weight of Emma and Hook's eyes on them, hears Emma's strangled, shocked gasp.

Cyrilla spreads wings that are wider than Emma is tall and flexes them. Her beak is large and powerful, her eyes fierce. She beats her massive wings once, swooping over Ripkin's head to land on Hook's shoulder. Her tail is a flash of snowy white beneath chestnut brown wings and body.

"Bloody hell," Hook mutters, shifting his weight. "I'd forgotten how much you used to weigh."

Cyrilla looks between Emma and Ripkin and shrugs her wings. "He wasn't always Captain Hook," she says. "And I wasn't always a magpie."

* * *

Emma is so shocked she can't speak for nearly a minute. Instinctively, her eyes go to Ripkin, checking that he is still a lynx, still the Ripkin she knows and loves.

Hook's Cyrilla perches silently on his shoulder, gripping his leather coat with large talons. Her wingspan must be two, two and a half metres, Emma thinks. Her feathers are rich, beautiful golden-brown darkening to chestnut on her wings and snowy white on her tail. Emma's never seen a bird that big, that-noble.

Cyrilla's magpie shape has always seemed such a perfect fit for his personality: clever and quick, selfish, ruthless, a survivor, completely obsessed with shiny things.

But the way he'd offered his services to find Henry, the quiet determination and belief he has in her, the simple surety and confidence he has in his ship and his love for the sea-they don't fit that profile.

"I'm sorry," she finally says.

Hook frowns, running a finger through the feathers on Cyrilla's breast. "What for?"

"Because I've thought of you as just a magpie for a long time," she says, "and it seems that you're a lot more than that."

He smiles. "I did this to myself, you know. To get revenge for my Milah, to destroy the crocodile, I became less than I was. Hook . . . Hook is me, but without any mercy, any kindness. Just obsessed with revenge. It's not a good thing to live for, Emma."

"I think I prefer you this way. You and your-what is she now?" Emma breaks off.

Hook shrugs Cyrilla off his shoulder and she lands beside him on the ground, nipping at his hook in annoyance. "Bloody heavy," he mutters. "A white tailed sea eagle-they were quite common in the enchanted forest, around the coast line."

Ripkin pads closer cautiously. "So you changed when you first came to Neverland because your personality had?"

Hook looks at Emma before he answers; it's rare to talk to a daemon not your own. "Aye, though any daemon can change at will here. They settle once more after you leave Neverland's waters."

Emma feels Ripkin concentrating hard, feels something concrete inside her go fluid and uncertain. He gasps and flashes into a cheetah. Their sides heave with exhaustion, sweat beading on Emma's brow. "We're out of practise," Ripkin smiles. He flickers back and forth between some of his old favourites, first a field mouse, then a coyote, a finch, an otter. He comes back to his lynx shape the most often; they're both comfortable like that.

Cyrilla seems pretty firmly fixed as an eagle, preening her feathers happily. Perhaps, Emma thinks, it hadn't been her choice to settle as a magpie when she and Hook left Neverland for the first time. She can't imagine her personality ever changing so much that Ripkin would be forced to settle as something else; but then she's never seen her love killed in front of her. She looks at Hook and Cyrilla talking quietly to each other, and for a second. she hates Gold.

They sit in silence, Hook glancing at Emma every few minutes. Emma and Ripkin doze side by side, Ripkin still scrolling absently through various different forms.

She's asleep when Snow and David come back from their foraging trip, laden with the berries Hook instructed them to gather, Regina a step behind them. The three royals take in their daughter sleeping quietly, Hook keeping watch a few metres away. They relax for a second, before Snow drops everything on the ground in shock.

"Charming," she gasps, grabbing her husband's arm and pointing to where Ripkin sleeps, curled around Emma's feet. He's being a coyote with rain-grey fur and a bushy tail.

Charming's mouth drops open and his wolf daemon whines uneasily.

Hook laughs then, because their expressions are just too good, and Cyrilla glides smoothly down from a low branch above his head. When she lands, she is a snow leopard. "Did we forget to tell you?" she purrs. "Daemons don't settle in Neverland."


	8. 8--Neverland, part III

Emma has never been more glad to leave a place than Neverland.

The Jolly Roger hits the water a few hundred metres from Storybrooke's harbour. The terrific impact sends Emma sprawling painfully across the polished deck, and a wave of icy Atlantic water over the bow.

Ripkin stands with an irritated hiss and shakes out his fur. He is still a lynx, to Emma's relief. She's not sure how she'd handle her soul changing so drastically. But now she looks-he is different. His fur is longer, and there's more tawny mingled in with the brown and tan. He looks a little bigger, a little fuller.

"It looks like we've really come into ourselves," he remarks, and rasps his barbed tongue along her cheek. Smiling, she gathers him in her arms and stands.

She nearly drops him in surprise.

Daniya is sat calmly beside David, as she always is, but she has become stockier, regal; her short dusky fur has turned a brilliant mist-white. Snow and Charming stare at the wolf daemon until Ozymandias trots over to nose at Daniya's flank.

"You've all changed," Emma whispers. Ozymandias' antlers have an extra tine; Regina's panther daemon blinks through jade eyes rather than his usual violet.

Ripkin flicks a tufted ear thoughtfully. "Is it really that strange? Are you honestly the same person you were when I settled? David was a shepherd when Daniya settled; now he's a king. And we're still us, Emma. Just a bit more."

She nods, rubbing his neck thoughtfully. "Yeah, I guess." She finally concedes.

"Everything alright, Swan?"

Emma turns to face the helm and catch Hook's eye. She looks for the beautiful little magpie in her usual place, perched on his steel hook, but she isn't there.

"Up there," Ripkin murmurs, his olive eyes fixed on the railing three feet to the left of the captain. Cyrilla's eagle talons are curled tightly in the wood. Her feathers are lighter than Emma remembers, her beak a little shorter. The sea throws the sun's light back up at the eagle daemon, teasing the red-gold from her dark wings. She preens under Emma's gaze, and flits to Hook's shoulder. He sets the helm and walks down to join them on the main deck.

"He looks a little different, Swan," Hook comments with a grin.

Emma returns his smile cautiously. "A white tailed sea eagle," she says. "She suits you, Killian."


	9. 9--True Love

The first time Emma sees Mary Margaret touch David's Daniya, she nearly chokes in shock. It's frighteningly casual, the way her fingers catch in Daniya's snowy ruff, trace the silky triangle of the wolf daemon's ear. In response, David thumbs Ozymandias' velveted antlers and presses a kiss to the stag's russet brow as he leaves for work.

Ripkin presses his mottled side close to her shin and springs up onto her lap. His fur is soft and familiar in her hands-only her hands. The thought of someone else touching him, holding him, her Ripkin, her soul, makes her shake with nausea.

Snow smiles sympathetically. "It unnerves you, doesn't it?"

She swallows thickly. "You-David-how can you touch- how can-she isn't yours, she isn't you."

Ozymandias moves slowly towards them; his hooves are loud on the wooden floor. "We love them completely. I love David as much as I love Snow...how could I not love his touch?"

And now that she thinks about it, she has seen them touch before and not even registered the intimacy, Snow and Charming make it feel so normal. Emma recalls the husband and wife passing on the street and Daniya pushing her nose into Mary Margaret's hand in greeting; recalls David brushing his hand along the stag daemon's flank to calm his wife in confrontations with Regina.

"I guess that's true love, huh?" she says finally.

There's a mother's wisdom in Mary Margaret's eyes. "You'll find out one day."


	10. 10--Before and After

Henry starts crying ten miles outside of Storybrooke. He squirms in his car seat and goes red in the face, shrieking at the top of his voice. His daemon flickers between shapes too fast for Regina to count, matching his wailing with her own cries.

Regina bites her lip. Her new son is inconsolable and they've not even reached the town border. She didn't think she'd fail as a mother quite this soon.

At the next layby, she pulls off the road and climbs out of the SUV, taking Henry in her arms and rocking him gently. "Shhhh, little prince, Henry, shhh. You're okay," she tells him desperately.

He cries louder, thrashing back and forth in her arms. In his car seat, his daemon turns into a tiny wildcat-or is she a lynx?-and yowls.

Cosimo, a hulking black shadow, flows forward from the back seat. He takes Henry's daemon in his powerful jaws and jumps to land at Regina's feet. Without a word, the panther daemon curls around Henry's soul and gently licks her. His tongue is longer than her tiny body.

Amazed, Regina watches Henry quiet and still in her arms. With a final hiccup, he goes silent and stares up at her.

"Hi," she whispers to him breathlessly. Henry gurgles and blinks slowly. Cosimo is still gently grooming the infant daemon. She has shifted into a panther cub beneath his touch.

"Don't panic, Regina," he purrs. "We can do this."

She nods determinedly. "Yes. We can. How did you know what to do?"

"We both did," he allows. "It's instinct. We'll pick it up."

He gazes thoughtfully at his mimic. "I like the name Phoena for her. Don't you think?"

A smile breaks across Regina's face. "Phoena. Henry and Phoena. Cosimo and Phoena. Yes, I do.

She buckles Henry back into his car seat and places it on the front seat. Cosimo curls himself into the foot well. It's a tight squeeze for him, but one that allows him to rest his ebony head on the seat beside Henry's carrier.

The last ten miles to Storybrooke are spent in a comfortable silence. When Regina glances across at her new son, she sees Phoena in the shape of a beagle puppy; her body is curled up beside Henry's, both fast asleep, but her head rests on the tip of Cosimo's nose.


End file.
